Adventures in the magnetosheath: two decades of modeling and planetary applications of the Spreiter magnetosheath model

A review is given of the authorʹs two decades of magnetosheath modeling work with John Spreiter Beginning in the early 1970s, a sequence of computational magnetosheath submodels that extended and refined Johnʹs basic model were developed and successfully applied to virtually every planet in the solar system including the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars and the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. A real-time version was also developed as one segment of an integrated global model for terrestrial space weather forecasting. The scope and depth of these successful applications taken together have demonstrated the remarkable accuracy and versatility of Spreiterʹs basic modeling concepts and have confirmed the validity of his legacy magnetosheath modeling ideas.